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Which came first: the IT team or the IT infrastructure?

Barry Cooks, VP of Engineering –

You might have read our previous blog post about the changing role of IT professionals and said to yourself, “Sure, the role of the IT professional has changed, but what about the technology? And how can I stay relevant enough to claim that title of strategic adviser in my business?” As we noted, the role of the IT professional has swung like a pendulum, from an adviser to a help desk function, with the trend now swinging back to an integral advisory role. As IT professionals are once again stepping into the role of strategic partners, the technology itself is on a similar upswing.

When businesses were first using the mainframe for computing, IT was heavily involved in the business’ development. Every request that was even tangentially related to an IT need had to go through the IT department. The hardware was highly consolidated simply because no one had yet developed any more scalable alternatives, and the IT teams were the gatekeepers.

Fast forward further down the line, and we now see massive scale-out and scale-up initiatives in every sector. It started with the creation of PCs; with that invention, technology fell into the hands of individual departments and the IT teams fell into more of a supporting and troubleshooting role, rather than a driving innovation, role. Since then, we’ve seen companies building out massive physical data centers, and highly virtualized cloud environments, layer on top of layer, losing that initial consolidation.

The resultant complexity is now forcing IT teams to once again refocus on consolidation (and with it, their more strategic roles)—even in the face of continuous pressure to scale out and up. With rising costs and complexity looming ever present, reigning in IT management for more centralized oversight has never been more critical.

So what’s coming next for ever-evolving IT infrastructures and the teams responsible for ensuring their performance and availability? Is one really driving the other? As you’ve likely guessed, there’s no simple answer. The symbiotic “yin-yang” relationship between the two, coupled with business and market drivers not yet known, will forever push IT infrastructures and the teams responsible their performance into undiscovered realms of complexity. This will necessitate the need for and development of automations and solutions to bring order to the chaos—and then another round of evolution and advancement will push everything and everyone to their limits—which will require IT teams to step back into their more hands-on roles. The ultimate question will not be which is driving the other, IT infrastructures or IT departments, but rather, which companies are driving both?

Get a demo to learn how IPM can ensure your company’s IT infrastructure is ready for this next wave.